Senate Grills JP Morgan Bank

The saga of the JP Morgan Bank "London Whale" disaster continued last week with the release of a major Senate report and public hearings on Capital Hill.

Previous Related Posts:
Economic News Round-Up ~ The London Whale
JP Morgan Fall-Out Continues
Dimon Cozies Up to Senate Banking Committee
Economic News Round-Up ~ London Whale Leaving JP Morgan

Cnn Money

During a press briefing Thursday, Levin said the investigation of 90,000 documents, and more than 200 phone conversation and instant messages, showed how the bank "ignored limits on risk taking, dodged oversight and misinformed the public."
But the report also criticized regulators at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for not following up on red flags.

From AFP, via Google

Senator Carl Levin, at a hearing on JPMorgan's ill-fated "whale" trades, slammed the bank's trading operation that lost $6.2 billion over just a few months in 2012 as a "runaway train barreling through every risk limit."

"Derivative values that can't be trusted are a serious risk to our financial system," said Levin, the chairman of the Senate subcommittee on investigations.

The incident is a "reminder you just can't rely on a major bank... without a strong regulator looking over," Levin added.

A 300-page report by the subcommittee said that JPMorgan kept adding risky bets on top of earlier ones, hid losses, disregarded its own rules for risk limits, avoided oversight by its regulator and "misinformed" investors, regulators and the public.

Former and current JPMorgan executives testifying at the Senate hearing painted a picture of confusion and disbelief over the scale of the losses, which blindsided the Wall Street powerhouse in the first quarter of last year.

Ina Drew, JPMorgan's chief investment officer at the time with responsibility for the London trading operation which racked up the losses, admitted errors even as she pointed the finger at others.

"I was, and I remain, deeply disappointed and saddened that such significant losses occurred in the business unit I oversaw," said Drew, who resigned last year to take responsibility for the debacle, according to her prepared testimony.

But Drew also pointed a finger at London employees that she said misled her on the scale of the problem and "let me, and the company, down."

President Obama as Clint Eastwood's Invisible Straw Man

As an English major and bookish person, it's fascinating to me that iconic books are beginning to define the candidates.

For the Republicans it's clearly anything written by Ayn Rand from Atlas Shrugged to The Fountainhead.  John Galt represents the selfish "every person for themselves" attitude that causes the Republican Congress to block or stonewall every social program that might help anyone, and their vision of society is of one divided between successful wealthy people and the slacker rabble who are beneath them.

My posts about the Republicans and Ayn Rand's books:
Ayn Rand and the Politics of Egomania
More on the Ryan and Ayn Connection

For the Democrats, the new book reference, thanks to Clint Eastwood, is Ralph Ellison's amazing book, Invisible Man.

Thursday night at the Republican Convention, Clint Eastwood played out a bizarre ad lib between himself as a typical Republican and an empty chair representing President Obama. While it's easy to laugh and blame the whole thing on the senility of an aging actor past his prime, what he did was quite symbolic.

Obviously the Republicans want Obama's chair to be "empty" - they want him gone from the White House.  Back in April,  the Romneys were asked in an interview what they would like to say to President Obama, they said Obama should just get out of the White House. Get out of the Oval Office - here we come!

Source: The Hill

"Well, start packing. That's what I'd like to say. Obviously we have a very different view. The president, I'm sure wants another four years, but the first few didn't go so well," Romney said.
"His policies have not helped the American people. They have not helped get jobs, they have not helped raise incomes and they’ve added trillions of dollars of debt,” Romney added.
The sentiment was echoed by Romney's wife, Ann, who has played an increasingly prominent role in the campaign in recent weeks.
"I believe it's Mitt's time. I believe the country needs the kind of leadership he's going to offer… So I think it's our turn now," Ann Romney said.

Notice what he also does in that quote - Mitt blabs a bunch of other things about Obama implying he hasn't done any good for the country and has created all the national debt by himself, which is a lie. In fact, Romney lies nearly continuously in his speeches about what Obama has or hasn't done, and other Republicans are worse. John Sununu and Donald Trump call him "foreign," and the birthers cheer. Sarah Palin says he wants to kill Grandma with a death panel, and everyone waves a flag. It's just rank propoganda and vicious rhetoric that bears no likeness to the truth.

In debate, that is known as creating a "straw man."
From "Fallacy Files":

Etymology:
"Straw man" is one of the best-named fallacies, because it is memorable and vividly illustrates the nature of the fallacy. Imagine a fight in which one of the combatants sets up a man of straw, attacks it, then proclaims victory. All the while, the real opponent stands by untouched.

So we have real Obama, who was born in the United States and has been a really good President for four years, then we have this demon straw man who is just a diabolical fiend, conspiring with his own parents before he was born to become President and drive Tea Party members insane 50 years later.

What Clint Eastwood did with his comedy sketch was to imagine Obama sitting in that chair on stage, in effect creating an "imaginary straw man." How do we know that his vision of Obama was not the real thing? Well, he put words into Obama's mouth that he wouldn't say - our President just isn't going to tell Mitt or anyone else to "F*** himself," which is what Clint implied as a joke. It was just unfunny.

Eric Stetson wrote in an essay called "Attacking an Imaginary Obama"

It is not insignificant that Clint Eastwood pretended that the imaginary Barack Obama he was talking to responded to him with vulgarity. On multiple occasions, he pretended that Obama cursed him with the f-word as a response to his political criticisms. The real President Obama would not do this, of course, because he is a gentleman who speaks in a dignified manner. Republicans like Clint Eastwood cannot stand that. The Obama of their imagination is ghetto trash, the kind of person who would cuss and make his points using vulgarity rather than well-reasoned arguments. They literally imagine him as their image of the stereotypical young urban thug, because the reality of a young black liberal gentleman is too difficult for them to comprehend or accept.

Exactly. The invisible straw man in that chair is not the real Obama.

Hungry Coyote on Daily Kos has a great diary about the disrespect shown to Obama by Eastwood, and I won't try to repeat all of it because I want to actually discuss the literature involved with some quotes from Ellison.

But first let's just look at a quote from MSNBC transcript she has kindly provided, a snippet of discussion between James Lipton of the Actor's Studio and Chris Hayes.

Chris Hayes: . . . he was sitting in a chair. So he was being literally talked; literally, physically talked down to.

James Liption: Down to.

Chris Hayes: Down to, and like a school boy; like an errant school boy, and my executive producer made this point about you know, Clint Eastwood and the RNC should go back and read The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison because actually, there's a whole masterpiece of American literature ... around the experience of invisibility in front of the white power structure for a black man in America. And obviously that was; I don't want to say like that that was obviously the intentional subtext. I think it was not thought out. I just think it was they wanted to have a gag. But the way it reads was deeply, deeply profoundly, profoundly disrespectful in a way that really, I found kind of upsetting.

James Liption: One of the things about this campaign that has fascinated me is the number of jokes that have gone over like lead balloons.

Alex Wagner: yes.

James Liption: I've never heard quite so many jokes that weren't really funny. They're structured like a joke, sounds like a joke; you think you're listening to a joke, except it's not funny.

I think Ralph Ellison would concur - it's unfunny to imagine a black man as errant schoolboy - or "boy" of any kind, especially in the 21st century. The trouble is, the Republicans seem to long for the plantation past with their talk of secession as the answer to all problems, and their denial about America becoming more brown and less white all the time. I think that's why they are desperate enough to let their racism show.

Every time we hear a string of dog whistles in a speech, what the speaker is really just showing you his ideal straw man - a black person who never heard of civil rights, who never went to college, who never wrote a book or owned a house or entered the middle class. In his convention acceptance speech Mitt Romney, like Santorum before him, mocked Obama for being a lawyer, when all three of them went to the same exact Law School at Harvard. That is like making yourself into a straw man, then attacking yourself with just as much ferocity lest someone mistake you for your enemy. It must be painful to go on stabbing yourself that way, but Mitt, Ryan and the others want to highlight differences, not similarities.

African Americans back in the day endured a type of apartheid, restricted to certain neighborhoods, certain jobs, certain schools, certain expectations. Ellison was a man of that time, and as in Kathryn Stockett's recent novel The Help set in Mississippi during the sixties civil rights movement, people were expected to "know their place," to sit in the corner, to look down, and to never speak up. Ironically, that learned behavior of obsequiousness certainly helped the struggle as they followed Gandhi's rules of non-violence and Thoreau's idea of civil disobedience. Brave people were willing to endure anything to change the system, from the indignity of mustard poured over their heads at a lunch counter or being chased by police dogs on a public street or thrown in jail.

And Ralph Ellison's 1952 novel was just one of a number of great American books that influenced social change in the 60s, but given that the Republicans don't see President Obama clearly and Eastwood literally made him the "Invisible Man" on stage in Tampa, here are some quotes from the book that can remind us of the plight of President Obama. No matter what he does, 30% of American won't accept him as a "real American," and many of them will never admit they were wrong. But they are the ones who can't see themselves clearly.

“I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allen Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie extoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination—indeed, everything and anything except me.”

“I was pulled this way and that for longer than I can remember. And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone's way but my own. I have also been called one thing and then another while no one really wished to hear what I called myself. So after years of trying to adopt the opinions of others I finally rebelled. I am an invisible man.”

“I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest. Or when, even as just now I've tried to articulate exactly what I felt to be the truth. No one was satisfied”

"America is woven of many strands; I would recognize them and let it so remain. It's 'winner take nothing' that is the great truth of our country or of any country. Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat. Our fate is to become one, and yet many -- This in not prophecy, but description."

Economic News Round-Up

Scranton, PA, Cuts Worker Pay to Minimum Wage

Unions representing civil servants in Scranton, Pa., filed suit Tuesday after the mayor cut pay for police, firefighters, garbage collectors and other public workers to minimum wage, saying that was all the city could afford. Unions representing police, fire and public workers in the city of 76,000 filed three lawsuits after the city defied a judge's order and issued paychecks Friday that paid 398 city employees at the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, according to the Scranton Times-Tribune.

The lawsuits against Mayor Chris Doherty include one filed in federal court under the Fair Labor Standards Act accusing the city of failing to pay wages on time and failing to pay overtime. Another lawsuit seeks to hold the mayor in contempt for violating a judges order. Yet another alleges that benefits for disabled police and firefighters were cut without a hearing.

Bloomberg Interview with Warren Buffet   He says Euro will fail without rule changes in European banking: "It can't survive with the present rules - that's what they're learning. So the question is, can seventeen countries get together in a way to essentially re-do something in some fundamental ways that require much closer cooperation when they're individual conditions are so different." On the Supreme Court Health Care Ruling: "A lot of businessmen complain about corporate taxes. Corporate taxes are less than 2% of GDP. So if you eliminated all of corporate taxes, you've got seven points against you on health care. It's the tapeworm essentially of the American economy and we've not dealt with that yet. Obamacare is a step in the right direction." Many More Quotes from Buffett on CNBC Robert Reich explains the LIBOR scandal

. . . We trust that the banking system is setting today’s rate based on its best guess about the future worth of the money. And we assume that guess is based, in turn, on the cumulative market predictions of countless lenders and borrowers all over the world about the future supply and demand for the dough. But suppose our assumption is wrong. Suppose the bankers are manipulating the interest rate so they can place bets with the money you lend or repay them . . . . . . Sad to say, there’s reason to believe this has been going on, or something very much like it. This is what the emerging scandal over “Libor” (short for “London interbank offered rate”) is all about. Libor is the benchmark for trillions of dollars of loans worldwide – mortgage loans, small-business loans, personal loans. It’s compiled by averaging the rates at which the major banks say they borrow. So far, the scandal has been limited to Barclay’s, a big London-based bank that just paid $453 million to U.S. and British bank regulators, whose top executives have been forced to resign, and whose traders’ emails give a chilling picture of how easily they got their colleagues to rig interest rates in order to make big bucks. (Robert Diamond, Jr., the former Barclay CEO who was forced to resign, said the emails made him “physically ill” – perhaps because they so patently reveal the corruption.) But Wall Street has almost surely been involved in the same practice, including the usual suspects — JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Bank of America – because every major bank participates in setting the Libor rate, and Barclay’s couldn’t have rigged it without their witting involvement. In fact, Barclay’s defense has been that every major bank was fixing Libor in the same way, and for the same reason. And Barclays is “cooperating” (i.e., giving damning evidence about other big banks) with the Justice Department and other regulators in order to avoid steeper penalties or criminal prosecutions, so the fireworks have just begun. ~ more at link~ 

London Whale Leaving JP Morgan

Bruno Iksil, the JPMorgan Chase trader known as the "London Whale" has left the bank in the wake of a trading scandal, a person familiar with the situation said. Iksil's departure had been widely expected after he became the focus of attention in the trading scandal, because of the huge positions he took in credit markets. Achilles Macris, who headed CIO in Europe, and a third colleague, Martin Javier-Artajo, were also no longer listed in the company's internal employment database as of Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier on Friday.

JP Morgan's Profits Fell 8.9%

Overall, the bank's second-quarter earnings fell 8.7% from the year-ago quarter, as the bank saw a 16% decline in revenue. J.P. Morgan has been in the spotlight since early April as its outsized, complex trades on derivatives tied to corporate bonds came under intense scrutiny. The Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission are investigating the trading loss, which has played into the Washington political and policy battle over the shape of financial overhaul. Just prior to releasing its results early Friday, the bank said it would reduce its previously reported first-quarter profit by 8.5%, or $459 million, on valuations of certain positions in the chief investment office's synthetic credit portfolio. It said there was "a material weakness" in its internal control over financial reporting for the first quarter, and its internal review is continuing.

Chief Justice John Roberts Took a Brave Stand Knowing Conservatives Would Vilify Him

Whatever the political leanings of Chief Justice John Roberts, his choice to vote with the Liberal side of the Supreme Court in the ACA ruling was an honorable and brave thing to do. He rose above the fray and followed the rule of law, not the ramblings of some right-wing talking points. I don't agree with all his decisions - Citizens United is an abomination - but in this particular case, he did the right thing.

The fact is, John Roberts has a whole host of new fans and admirers because he helped save Obama's Health Care plan for America. And we won't forget.

My favorite tweet from yesterday, and possibly from all time, was this:

John Roberts is the Severus Snape of SCOTUS.

— Michael Foss (@Fossphate) June 28, 2012

I have no idea if the person who tweeted that was a liberal or a conservative, or whether he agreed with the verdict rendered. They might love Justice Roberts or hate his guts. In a literary sense it works either way because Professor Severus Snape was an ambiguous character up until the end of the Harry Potter series when we saw his true nature. Both sides saw Snape as a traitor, yet he was actually just walking a dangerous line and trying to do the morally right thing under tough circumstances. And at the end of the story, he was the "bravest man" Harry Potter ever knew.

Sometimes that happens in real life. For me, after this ruling, Chief Justice Roberts is a hero like that.
Am I being corny? Perhaps, but listen to Chris Matthews waxing poetic about Roberts yesterday:

Roberts Rules! Let's Play Hardball.
. . . Let me start with one of the great days in this country's history. Today the Supreme Court led by the Chief Justice himself decided that Barack Obama's Health Care Act squares with the American Constitution. All the drum-beating, all the horrors floated up by the right-wing fever swamps are, after today, simply the hate-vapors of the perennial rejectionists to progress, the "rear guard" funded by the Koch Brothers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Today's Hero ~ Chief Justice John Roberts, who walked to the forefront of history and said yes to progress and and no to the role prescribed for him by the Right. He would not be that man, he would not let the court named for him carry historic blame for denying health care to tens of millions of Americans. He would not be the ramrod for yet another right-leaning partison-appearing Supreme Court ruling that would have been the third strike over the plate following Bush v. Gore and Citizens United. So let's start tonight by looking at this bold, defiant, grand decision by Chief Justice Roberts . . .

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Earlier this week we read Justice Scalia's bizarre dissent on the Arizona Immigration case, in which he went into absolutely Pureblood Death Eater mode while comparing illegal Hispanics in Arizona to freed slaves before the Civil War and those with "contagious diseases." It's easy to see Roberts as the reverse - someone who decided to put the Law ahead of prejudices or his own personal opinions. And indeed, he ruled the opposite of Scalia in that case, as well as the ACA case.

Supreme Court expert and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Linda Greenhouse, wrote about Roberts role in the Immigration decision for the New York Times:, implying that Roberts willingness to go along with the majority might have driven Scalia nuts, LOL:

The first thing that jumped out at me was the name of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. on Justice Kennedy’s opinion, along with the expected names of Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor. The chief justice was, apparently, in complete agreement with the majority as evidenced by his silence – the dog that didn’t bark, you might say. He felt no need to write separately to express even a shade of difference from the majority or a hint of sympathy with the dissenting views of his usual allies. Beyond Justice Scalia’s transparent dislike for the president, perhaps it was the chief justice’s apostasy that drove him around the bend.

Yes, horrors that the Chief Justice wouldn't succumb to all the dog whistles in Justice Scalia's dissent. Maybe Roberts just isn't a racist?

About the Health Care Ruling, Greenhouse analyzed Roberts' role which is officially "Chief Justice of the United States."

. . . the title that he actually goes by, chief justice of the United States, seemed a good fit. He spoke for the country.
His decision to call the mandate a tax and to provide a clearly reluctant fifth vote for upholding it as within the Congressional taxing power was a deeply pragmatic call that saved the Affordable Care Act. Certainly by no coincidence, it also saved the Supreme Court from the stench of extreme partisanship that has hung over the health care litigation from the moment more than two years ago that Republican state officials raced one another to the federal courts to try to erase what they had been unable to block.
. . . But it is Chief Justice Roberts’s extraordinary role that is most intriguing. He has just completed his seventh term as chief justice, and at 57 could well serve another quarter-century or longer. Clearly he is playing a long game.
. . . John Roberts doesn’t like the Affordable Care Act. He went to great lengths in his opinion to show his total agreement with the plaintiffs’ core argument: that the requirement to buy health insurance was an unprecedented effort by Congress to force people into a market they had chosen not to enter, to create commerce where none existed. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissenting opinion pierced gaping holes in the chief justice’s analysis. But he stuck to his position, coming within an inch of invoking what Justice Ginsburg ironically labeled “the broccoli horrible” and warning that “under the government’s theory, Congress could address the diet problem by ordering everyone to buy vegetables.”
Since there were four justices who also saw the mandate that way, as Justices Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Anthony M. Kennedy explained in an unusually structured opinion that all four signed as co-authors, the mandate might have died right there. But then the chief justice abruptly pivoted and declared that because the penalty for not buying insurance functioned as a tax, it could be upheld as a tax and the mandate was therefore constitutional.

Roberts' law professor, Laurence Tribe, whom you may recall had predicted that ACA would be upheld, praised him on Thursday in the Boston Globe:

“I think this term was the turning point in the legacy of John Roberts,” Harvard law professor Laurence H. Tribe said in an ­e-mail to the Globe. “He now has a chance to be a truly great chief justice. Of course, he ­dissented in some of the liberal-leaning decisions of the current largely conservative court, but when push came to shove he was where he needed to be.”
Tribe, who taught Roberts and President Obama at ­Harvard Law School, said ­Roberts’s decision to become the swing vote in a 5-4 decision “saved the day — and perhaps the court.”

In the same article, Joel B. Grossman of Johns Hopkins University said:

“It’s kind of an act of leadership rather than an act of ideology . . . I can’t imagine his sympathies were with expanding congressional power, but I think he recognized that there might even be a crisis if he cut this law off at the knees.”
. . . “He is going to be chief for a long time and one thing you don’t want is to lose control of the court,” he said. “This fits the model of wanting to keep the court together and perhaps even to approve something he personally found distasteful.”

Roberts must have known that the conservatives would see him as a sell-out, shun him socially, and immediately launch ad hominem attacks as bad or worse as those aimed at the President. And in fact, it started in less than 24 hours.

Ben Shapiro, Editor of Breitbart.com launched a series of damning tweets:

This is the greatest destruction of individual liberty since Dred Scott. This is the end of America as we know it. No exaggeration.

— benshapiro (@benshapiro) June 28, 2012

Chief Justice Roberts was the worst part of the Bush legacy.

— benshapiro (@benshapiro) June 28, 2012

It's not like I didn't call this back in 2005 re: Roberts. Flashback: President Bush's Roberts Pick Disappoints: breitbart.com/Big-Government…

— benshapiro (@benshapiro) June 28, 2012

I hate pansy Republicans who think that just because SCOTUS rules something, they're right. Try Roe v. Wade. Or Plessy. Or Dred Scott.

— benshapiro (@benshapiro) June 28, 2012

How dumb is the Roberts opinion? It actually quotes Franklin's "death and taxes" quip as evidence for a legal point.

— benshapiro (@benshapiro) June 28, 2012

For his next magic trick, John Roberts will turn Obamacare into a butterfly, so President Obama won't have to worry about tax questions.

— benshapiro (@benshapiro) June 28, 2012

Wow. Call a "wahhhhbulance" for him!

Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky took a different route, issuing a Press Release that dissed the entire decision as moot somehow, as if Justice Roberts had no authority to render a verdict. In fact, he carefully doesn't mention Roberts at all, which is telling, and refers to the majority opinion as "couple people" who "declare something." Yeah, the Supreme Court doesn't matter unless they rule your way.

Just because a couple people on the Supreme Court declare something to be 'constitutional' does not make it so. The whole thing remains unconstitutional. While the court may have erroneously come to the conclusion that the law is allowable, it certainly does nothing to make this mandate or government takeover of our health care right.

Which caused the Village Voice to retort:

Actually, Rand, that's exactly what makes it so.
. . . Paul may want to review the 1803 case of Marbury V. Madison, which formed the basis for judicial review. In other words, it's what gave the Court its teeth -- it clearly defined the Court's role in the separation of powers in the federal government, making it the "supreme expositor of the Constitution."
This means that what the Court says goes -- regardless of whether a freshman Senator from Kentucky disagrees with it.

Rand Paul had so much criticism over his silly remark that he was still trying to explain in an interview the next day:
Interview From Marketplace Health Care:

Hobson: Well thanks for being here. I want to start by asking you about some comments that you made yesterday that have gotten a lot of attention. You said: "Just because a couple people on the Supreme Court declare something to be constitutional, does not make it so. The whole thing remains unconstitutional." Do you stand by that statement?
Paul: You know, I still agree with Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy and Alito that the Constitution doesn't justify the law.
Hobson: You're agreeing with the dissenters -- but that was not the ruling that the Supreme Court came down with.
Paul: Right, but that's all I'm saying, if if you ask Justice Scalia if he thinks the law is Constitutional, he'll still tell you "no." So I'm entitled to have my opinion as to what is constitutional and what is not. No one's talking about whether the ruling has validity or not, I'm just saying that I agree with the dissenters that don't believe the law is constitutional

Okey dokey.

Next . . . the apoplectic and hyperbolic (and repetitive) Rush Limbaugh slamming Roberts as some kind of Evil Taxman out to destroy the world:

What we have been told by the Chief Justice of the Court and four liberals on the court - Obamacare's just a massive tax increase.
. . . the Chief Justice was just hell-bound, hell-bent to find a way to make this law applicable, so you know what? As a tax increase it works because there's no limit on the federal government's ability to tax....
. . . John Roberts said (mocking voice) "It's not our job to forbid this, it's not our job to protect people from outcomes, it's not our job to determine what is right or wrong or any of it. We can't forbid this if it's what the elected representatives and the people want." . . . But what if we were deceived?
. . . What happened today was that we were bludgeoned with a tax that requires us to do what the government mandates. We must do what they say. . . . It is a 'stealth tax' and that's what it was all along. A massive behavior modification program.
. . . Chief Justice says (mocking voice) 'I can't forbid this. It's not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices. I gotta find a way - Congress wants this - I gotta find a way to make it happen. Okay - we'll call it a tax!'

The lowest blow so far has come from extremist radio host Michael Savage who implied that Robert's epilepsy gave him impaired judgment.

Let’s talk about Roberts. I’m going to tell you something that you’re not going to hear anywhere else, that you must pay attention to. It’s well known that Roberts, unfortunately for him, has suffered from epileptic seizures. Therefore he has been on medication. Therefore neurologists will tell you that medication used for seizure disorders, such as epilepsy, can introduce mental slowing, forgetfulness and other cognitive problems. And if you look at Roberts’ writings you can see the cognitive dissociation in what he is saying.

Oh Lord - "cognitive problems"? Really? Does this also explain Mitt Romney's lack of memory about everything he has ever said?

That statement is nasty two ways - not only is it egregious to bring up the private health matters of a Supreme Court Justice, it's insulting to anyone with epilepsy to imply that they can't make correct decisions. But isn't this just par for the course in Republican circles ~ bad health equals bad judgment equals "no insurance for you"? Don't the Republicans always imply that people with bad health or even children with pre-existing conditions from birth are somehow tainted and undeserving? Unless you're Ann Romney with high-functioning Multiple Sclerosis, or Dick Cheney with a defective heart, or Rick Santorum's poor little daughter, or Rush Limbaugh going blind from drug abuse. Oh yeah - that is irrelevant because they all have plenty of money for the best health care. It's only the poor and unemployed who don't deserve it.

All the more reason we need universal health care so people can get help without regard to their previous conditions or political affiliations. Death Eaters just aren't good at taking care of people. So thank you, Justice Roberts.

Dimon Cozies Up to Senate Banking Committee

Confident Much?

JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon got a warm and fuzzy welcome from the Senate Banking Committee. In fact, they rolled out the red carpet for the notorious banker who just lost billions due to the "London Whale" hedge fund debacle now being investigated by the FBI. Senators were falling all over themselves asking softball questions, while Dimon sailed calmly through it and offered only non-apology apologies while his stock rose on Wall Street.

He knew he didn't have to show any real remorse because JP Morgan was a donor to everyone in the room including the Banking Committee Chairman. They are all in bed together.
New York Post called this The Cozy and the Clueless:

“We have let a lot of people down, and we are sorry for it,” Dimon told the committee, which says it wants to know if the company is taking abnormal risk that could come back to bite taxpayers.
In other words, was JPMorgan gambling instead of simply investing when one of its employees — nicknamed the “London Whale” by Wall Street — made trades Dimon said were originally meant as portfolio insurance but turned into something else?
I think it’s telling that this guy was known as a “whale.” That’s what casino high rollers are called in the gambling world. It’s fitting that the folks who were trading against the London Whale knew that he was a gambler but that senators, who have been stalling for years on reforming regulations in the financial industry, are clueless.
Yesterday’s hearing reminded me of when Captain Renault in the movie “Casablanca” goes into Rick’s and feigns shock at what’s going on.
“I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here,” Renault says, you’ll recall.

On Huffington Post, Bill Moyers called this "Jamie Dimon's 'Family Reunion' With the Senate Banking Committee." His point was that all of the people on both sides of the aisle had either worked for Jamie Dimon or were looking forward to working for him someday. On his PBS Show he said: "This wasn't a hearing, it was a reunion of the Gambino family." LOL

Birther's Remorse: Coffman Warns Others to Drop It

It's really quite funny when Republicans try to shift so far to the right extreme that they fall off a limb. That recently happened to Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colorado). He said he didn't believe President Obama was really born in the United States, and now he is eating crow for breakfast. You have to laugh - it's beyond overdue for this to happen. The press should have called out every one of these birthers long ago, and I guess they tried. But now we've got Republicans themselves waking up like a drunk with a hangover saying "I said what? Oh, I didn't mean it . . . let's just move along . . ."

TPM: Coffman on his Birther Rant

“If I had to do it over again I think I would have said, ‘Let’s move from this birther question, the president was born in the United States, period,’” Coffman said in an interview with local station K-HOW. “‘Let’s just move on and let’s focus on the issues that are going to win this election. And secondly, let’s not ascribe this to those who oppose us that they’re any less Americans than we are.’”
A week earlier, Coffman had said at a fundraiser: “I don’t know whether Barack Obama was born in the United States of America. I don’t know that. But I do know this, that in his heart, he’s not an American. He’s just not an American.” He quickly issued a press release walking it back, but shunned follow-up questions on the incident. On Tuesday, he repeated the same statement, “I misspoke and I apologize,” five times to a television crew that approached him after an event, offering no further explanation.

Coffman told K-HOW on Thursday that he regretted suggesting the president was anything other than American, and repeatedly emphasized that suggesting as much was also bad optics. The host asked Coffman whether he was “speaking from the heart” when he made his initial incendiary remarks and simply recanted “for political reasons.”

It was only a few days ago that Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett had to take to the airwaves to apologize for embarrassing his state after he harrassed the State by threatening to drop Obama from the November ballot - can you imagine? A sitting President not allowed on a state ballot just because some jerks (or racists) feel he is illegitimate? Luckily someone had a little talk with this nutcase.

From Huff Post:

"If I embarrassed the state, I apologize, but that certainly wasn't my intent," Bennett said Tuesday during an interview with radio station KTAR, adding that he was just trying to "help as many Arizonians as I can" by looking into their concerns over the document.

Bennett also walked back his threat to keep Obama off Arizona's ballot this fall.
"He’ll be on the ballot as long as he fills out the same paperwork and does the same things that everybody else has," Bennett said.
However, when pressed by the radio hosts on whether he was pandering to birther conspiracy theorists who believe the president was born outside the United States, Bennett pushed back.

"What is so sacred or untouchable about this question that you can't even ask the question?" he said, after insisting that he himself does not subscribe to the fraudulent birth certificate theories.

In the radio interview he says he wasn't trying to draw attention, and was just doing his "quiet little job." Yeah - how about doing it with some common sense? Do these people just not understand that Obama's mother was an American? And that Hawaii is a state of the union? Hello?

The birther movement is all about making President Obama seem alien, foreign, exotic, and just plain "un-American." They say "African" and "Kenyan" with comtempt, possibly forgetting that there are plenty of white Africans and Kenyans, and even some with American parents. Are they making outrageous statements just to get votes from Tea Partiers, or so some of them really believe this nonsense? Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona is the Energizer Bunny of Birthers. No amount of verification from Hawaii will ever be enough for him to believe that President Obama was born there. He recently dispatched a "cold case" officer to go to Hawaii seeking more evidence, using taxpayer money to continue his own version of Captain Ahab and the Great Whale: Arpaio Not Giving Up on Birther Investigation

Sheriff Joe Arpaio said it will take more than a letter verifying the President's birth certificate for him to call off his criminal investigation. “I'm trying to determine if any fraud occurred and who’s responsible,” said the Sheriff. The Sheriff's cold case posse has been investigating the President's birth certificate since August and is currently following up on leads in Hawaii. The Sheriff said the verification that the secretary of state received from the Hawaii registrar does nothing to change that.

That's right - logic and reason are not going to stop Sheriff Joe! He keeps on going and going and going . . .

JP Morgan Fall-Out Continues

WSJ: Inside JP Morgan's Blunder

On April 30, associates who were gathered in a conference room handed Mr. Dimon summaries and analyses of the losses. But there were no details about the trades themselves. "I want to see the positions!" he barked, throwing down the papers, according to attendees. "Now! I want to see everything!"
When Mr. Dimon saw the numbers, these people say, he couldn't breathe.
. . .Mr. Dimon publicly disclosed the losses in a conference call on May 10. Afterward, he told Mr. Lee: "Maybe I can sleep tonight," according to a person familiar with the conversation.
At home with his wife that evening, he confided to her: "I missed something bad."

Reuters: FBI to Probe Morgan Scandal

A separate source familiar with the FBI probe, opened by the agency's New York office, described it as preliminary. The probe was seen in some quarters as a necessary public step, given the ongoing debate in Washington about bank regulation, and one expert said it raised the level of concern around what happened.
"The FBI looks for evidence of crimes and goes after people who it alleges are criminals. They want to send people to jail. The SEC pursues all sorts of wrongdoing, imposes fines and is half as scary as the FBI," said Erik Gordon, a professor in the law and business schools at the University of Michigan.
The bank's trading losses have also drawn the attention of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve, both of which have opened inquiries.

Bloomberg: Republican Lawmakers Off-Balance over Morgan

Some are seeking investigations, with Senator Mike Crapo of Wyoming among those calling on JP Morgan Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon to testify, which he has agreed to do. Senator Richard Shelby, the Banking Committee’s top Republican, said the loss emphasizes the need for capital standards for banks tougher than what the overhaul requires. Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee says Congress has no business getting involved.
...As Republican lawmakers split over their response to the JPMorgan loss, Democrats are unified on their message: that the trading loss underscores the need for tougher regulation of banks.
“It’s one of those things that’s clear that they were betting like you would do at the crap table in Las Vegas and they bet the wrong way,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said of the company’s loss this week. “That’s fine if they did it with their own money, but the problem is, the way Wall Street’s been working, is that heads they win, tails we lose.”

CNN: Dimon Will Testify to Senate

The Senate Banking Committee on Monday announced hearings to look into the trading losses from a regulatory angle. At the time, lawmakers said they planned to question regulators, not JPMorgan officials.
But on Thursday, Johnson announced he intended to invite Dimon to speak some time after the two hearings with regulators, which are scheduled for May 22 and June 6. A Banking Committee spokesman said the hearing at which Dimon will testify has not yet been scheduled.
"I encourage all of my colleagues on the Banking Committee to participate in these three critically important and timely hearings, so we can all better understand the facts," Johnson said.

CNBC: Size Matters in a Low Rate World

...there is one aspect which does not surprise rivals, instead generating a weary sigh of recognition: The investment dilemma JPMorgan found itself in in recent years. Notably, it seems one key reason why the CIO office was engaging in funky derivatives trades was that the wider climate made it so difficult for any firm to produce safe returns without taking outlandish bets. And doing this in a “hedged” way has become doubly difficult if you are a behemoth with $360 billion of cash.
Part of the problem lies with the ultra-low interest rate climate. This week the 10-year Treasury yield fell yet again, as the euro zone’s woes intensified.

Bigoted Is as Bigoted Does

I always warn people that I have strong opinions that many people may not want to hear. I'm as partisan as I can be, and unapologetic for that. And sometimes we just don't like public figures, and sometimes they say things that make us crazy.

But honestly, to me it matters not whether someone is from the left or the right - a bigot is a bigot, and an extremist is never going to win people over. Take a look at Rick Santorum if you don't believe me - oh wait, he's gone. Yes, he influenced an election and appealed to the 25% of extremists in this country, but most of us are not that person, no matter what party we are. Eventually he had to leave the stage. Paul Ryan was just attacked by the Catholic Church for being uncharitable and misinterpreting the Bible, and yet he believes he is the most devout and worthy member of that august institution.



On the Democratic side, we have our share of  religious opinions, and while Atheists want to be considered the  most opened-minded and enlightened people for rejecting organized religion, they can also be zealots. Try this - read the comments under any news story about religion and you will find a comment by some pompous jerk mocking people for belief in the "flying spaghetti monster" or the "imaginary being in the sky." Why is that enlightened? You are just attacking people for their beliefs, which is what some (not all) evangelical zealots do.



If you want people to listen to your point of view, just do something simple - be polite, think about your audience, think about the taste level. Just think. That's what President Obama does and he doesn't make many of these stupid mistakes. Don't use hate as a weapon all the time - it's doesn't work.

Please go read a List of Logical Fallacies and some of you might see what you've been wrong that gets you into trouble on the Internets.

Ad hominem (‘personal attack’; ‘poisoning the well’): L. "to the man;"
Def- attacking a person’s habits, personality, or reputation;
Ex- "His argument must be false because people say he’s a liar."

Bulverism: (named for C.S. Lewis’s imaginary character: Ezekiel Bulver) Def- attacking a person’s identity (race/gender/religion);
Ex- "You only think that because you’re a (man/woman; Black/White;
Catholic/Baptist; Democrat/Republican; Christian/Atheist; etc.)"

Straw Man (‘misrepresentation’):
Def- misrepresenting the opponent's argument; exaggerating or oversimplifying
Ex- "Einstein's theory must be false! It makes everything relative--even truth!"

3. Either/or (‘false dilemma’):
Def- limiting the possible answers to only two; oversimplification;
Ex- "If you think that, you must be either stupid or half-asleep."

We see all of those and more in political debate. The Mitt Romney Etch-A-Sketch joke is an ad hominem, but the twist is that Romney's own manager stated that erasing past statements was part of an election strategy. So the joke became a delicious irony that  tickled the humor of the public. However, when Ted Nugent and Rush Limbaugh attack President Obama or Sandra Fluke in vile language and spread lies about them, it's just not funny. Lies are not always jokes - sometimes they are just slurs, insults, and crazy-speech.

On many political forums, people make "sweeping generalities" - or what I call "throw out the baby with the bathwater" statements about other parts of the country they know little or nothing about. If Rick Perry in Texas makes some stupid remark about "wantin' to secede" because mean old Obama is forcing him to take medicaid funding (horrors) then some idiot will automatically write "Why do we need Texas anyway? Let them secede or merge with Mexico" as if every person in Texas is a Rick Perry clone. People don't realize how those statements bother Democrats who live in those states and fight for every vote. Rick Perry doesn't speak for the vast majority of Texans, and even the most right-leaning Texan would probably like to keep his United States Citizenship, don't you think? In most cases, the red states are split 50/50 so that conservatives win by very small margins, even in presidential races. Things are not cut and dried the way they seem on political forum or TV shows.



Let's recall it wasn't that long ago that the Dixie Chicks were lambasted and shunned for having the gall to say that not everyone from Texas was identical to George Bush. Obviously a false equivalency doesn't exist among "all the people down in Texas." Or in Tennessee where I live, or in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, or even South Carolina. The South has a diversity beyond a red-state status, just as the more liberal "blue states" actually have their share of card-carrying NRA members, evangelicals, tea partiers, and apocalypse-any-minute survivalists. There is no "one type" of person from any state, and to dismiss people based on geography is a rampant type of bigotry on the internet. Democrats are just as guilty of this as Republicans who think everyone in Massachusetts or New York is pro-abortion and loves President Obama.



Some people think that everyone south of the Mason Dixon line is automatically (a) a Christian or (b) a bigot. And the converse is true - there are those who say everyone north of Kentucky is automatically enlightened and immensely free of bigotry or prejudice of any kind. To anyone who believes that, I must ask if they've followed the careers of Michelle Bachman in Minnesota or Scott Walker in Wisconsin? 'Cause they are up there, you know - in a northerly direction. Sarah Palin was way up northerty-north in Alaska - where she saw Russia from her porch. Her husband belonged to a secessionist group, but that doesn't convince me that everyone in Alaska should be cut loose from the country due to Todd's extremism. Californians sometimes call themselves "Left Coasters" which is a cute tag-line, but that big blue state also gave us Ronald and Nancy Reagan, as well as Arnold Schwarzenegger. The United States is like that, even if we love to broad-brush the conversation.

Both sides of the political debate use Bulverism, Straw Man, and False dilemma every day because we are a divided society and people have become so extreme that real discourse is almost not possible. "You're either with me or agin' me, dadgummit!" And the internet makes it easy to throw down the gauntlet and "take a stand" as if your life depends on it, or as if our society will crumble if they don't. I think that's how the Civil War started, but never mind . . . That doesn't mean that either side is "right" in all cases. Many right-wingers will say that "all" Democrats are communists and baby killers, for instance, when most Democrats are actually just pro-choice, not pro-abortion. Many on the left will say that Christians are either Evangelicals or Tea Party members - ignoring the many Christians who work daily to re-elect President Obama.

It doesn't matter who is spewing this nonsense - it's not logical. Everyone starts to sound like Archie Bunker. A glance at any discussion about the Trayvon Martin case proves there is plenty of bigotry to go around on all sides. It's shocking.

I've always been both a Democrat and a Christian. That doesn't mean I believe that the Bible is correct about everything, but that also doesn't mean that Jesus was wrong about everything. I find the teachings of Jesus quite soothing after a day of reading insults to women, talk of cutting children out of food programs, and hate-filled screeds about shooting the President or anyone who gets in the way of gun rights. I don't think Jesus would have a chance of even getting on the radio in these days and times, and if he did the Left would say he was too "mild-mannered" and too bipartisan, while the Right would slam him for persecuting the money-lenders and saying that rich people aren't bound for glory.



Please go read some famous quotes from smart people in the past if you want your words to resonate:

"We must make a personal attack when there is no argumentative basis for our speech”
~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

"A bigot delights in public ridicule, for he begins to think he is a martyr." ~ Sydney Smith

Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.”
~ Ambrose Bierce

And to those I would add the old proverb: "Two wrongs don't make a right."



To me it's just as bad for Monica Crowley on Fox to attack Sandra Fluke with some homophobic slur as it is for anti-bullying gay activist Dan Savage to attack Christian teenagers as "pansy-aZZes" for walking out on his captive-audience diatribe against the Bible. I recently wasted a couple of days gathering their statements and public reaction on my other blog, Snark Amendment because I think it's good to archive this stuff, which is ephemeral and tends to get erased when no one is looking.

And these are just great examples of two-sides to the same coin (to be proverbial again).



Monica Crowley Becomes a Bigoted Internet Meme

Irony Lost on Dan Savage as He Bullies Christians (Now with Nearly Non-Apology Apology

I love the irony and the jokes, and of course twas ever thus that freedom of speech also means freedom to make a fool of yourself by acting like a mean little girl as the bitter Crowley did, or stepping in your own bulls****, to quote the ever-eloquent Savage (who seems to know only one unimaginative noun).

A blogger writing in near obscurity -- like me -- who expects that few people will ever read this post, can have a fixed point of view and maybe only offend someone about once a month, but when you have a large audience hanging on your every word, then you have to engage brain much more before putting mouth in gear. And also remember that the internet is forever. That is something Mitt Romney keeps forgetting as he rewrites his old opinions on everything from Student Loans to Osama Bin Laden. We remember this stuff, we really do. And we will call you out on it!